A very quick, but hopefully interesting post about communication.
(I hope I will have time to expand on it one day.)
What do GIFs, Emoji, Character Maps have in common..?
They are all alternative forms of communication.
Often we think of communication in terms of words on a page or the word of a spoken language.
But if we take for language the definition “a means of conveying ideas,” then it can exist without words.
Perhaps no where is this seen more often than in the world of sign languages.
GIFs
For example, a GIF can contain a sign language word; like this one from our Dictionary of Sign
Emoji
😷
These ideographs are part of unicode text.
They are also rich in meaning and can convey clear ideas and even instruct (ex: show how to navigate a website).
Character Maps
►►►
►https://www.online-toolz.com/tools/character-map.php
►https://unicode-table.com/en/
Used often in craigslist ad titles to ►►make the text stand out◄◄, unicode characters are a part of standard computer text. (In other words, not an image or other non-text element)